I write books—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—for people of all different ages, and especially for young people. Before starting my writing career, I was a newspaper editor with American Lawyer Media and Legal Times; before that, I was a lawyer with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now called WilmerHale). I have a bachelor’s degree in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, and a law degree and master’s degree in world politics from the University of Michigan. I live in Maryland with my husband, Rick Hoffman. We have two grown sons. Besides writing, I love to kayak, boat, and fish in the Chesapeake Bay region, swim, bowl duckpins, and tramp around the woods. And, of course, I love to read.

Some other things about me

When I was seven years old I wrote a bunch of books. Like these:
My mother and I sent one off to the Scholastic Book Club. I kept waiting for my book to show up for sale in the monthly book club flyers we got at school—this is how the publishing business works, isn’t it?—but it did not. I never saw that book, Little Red Train, again. Despite my disappointment, this was a good experience, because. . .

By the time my first book was published in 1997, I had received 199 rejections from publishers. (In my defense, they were not all rejections of the same book.) Sure, I cried about some, but that Little Red Train letdown had toughened me up. It also made me think that maybe I should find another occupation, so. . .

In between rejections, I went to law school. There, I met my husband. We both really liked law school, which some people find preposterous, but think about it: Reading. Writing. Thinking. Repeat. What’s not to like? Plus, we were in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which meant: Pizza Bob’s milkshakes. Fragels. (Do you not know what this is? Look it up.) The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. What more could a person want? Well, maybe. . .

Fish. So in between rejections and lawyering and marrying my husband, I went snorkeling for the first time. Oh, happy day!
What more could a person want? Well, maybe. . .

Kids. So we had kids. Two boys, to be specific. And what do you do when you have children? You read books with them. And you make up stories for them. Sometimes the stories have to feature a boy named Alex who becomes a knight in shining armor who saves the day so many times you never want to think about knights again. Sometimes the stories have to be about a boy named Ben who is the younger brother of Alex the knight, and who also needs to save the day once in a while, because it’s only fair. All of this saving-of-the-day got exhausting at times, but it was a good thing, because. . .

It made me realize that I wanted to dedicate my working time to writing books, although not necessarily knight-in-shining-armor books. And so I did. And so by now I’ve had twenty books published. What more could a person want?